Are you using the excellent VMware Fusion and backing up your Mac with Time Machine? If so, you may notice a problem.

Large backups

When you’ve been using Fusion’s virtual machine (in my case, to run Windows), you will find that Time Machine’s next backup takes longer than expected — sometimes much longer.

This is because Fusion stores its virtual machines’ disks as a bunch of large files. When you run your virtual machine using Fusion, the contents of the VM’s virtual disk changes, and even if you haven’t made many explicit changes to files, all sorts of small changes happen to the virtual disk’s contents.

Incremental can still be too much

Time Machine performs incremental backups. That is, it copies only files that have changed since the last backup. Unfortunately those large files that Fusion uses to store the virtual disk’s contents? They’ve probably all changed, at least a little.

So, instead of your incremental being a few megabytes and taking a few tens of seconds, it’s ten gigabytes, takes ages, and rapidly fills your backup disk. (Which causes its own problems: described here.)

An alternative fix

If you need incremental backups of your VMs, or your VMs are running an operating system that doesn’t have support for accessing theMac OS file-store (Linux, for example), then you’ll likely find this approach is the best for you.

If your VM(s) are running Windows (so you can access the Mac OS file-store from within the VM) and you don’t need a sophisticated incremental backup of your VMs then read on, as the following approach produces by far the most efficient backups.

This fix

The fix described here is to ensure the files you edit in Fusion’s virtual world are in the Mac’s natural file-store (so they continue to be backed up by Time Machine), stop using Time Machine to back up your virtual machines, and then back up your virtual machines in a different way. I’ll cover each of these steps in turn below.

Put your files somewhere safe

Instead of putting your Windows (or whatever) files in the Windows file-store, place them in the Mac’s file-store (which is available to Windows as the Z: drive by default). This means that your precious files have a proper, incremental backup using Time Machine, and you can restore earlier versions should the need arise.

Stop Time Machine backing up your VMs

Open Time Machine Preferences…, click on Options… and then the small + to add a Folder to the Do not back up list:

Then navigate to Documents below your home directory and there you will find a folder called Virtual Machines — add that and Time Machine will no longer backup your Fusion VMs.

And backup your VMs in a different way

If, like me, your virtual machine is a secondary system, then you probably have no need of an incremental, sophisticated backup. What’s important is the files you edit are protected, and they are now protected by Time Machine as part of the Mac’s natural file-store.

So, simply drag your Documents/Virtual Machines folder onto the backup drive every week or so, and you’re sorted.

Warning

As with any method of backup which relies on backing up the virtual machine’s disk image using the host operating system, your backup may not be of any use if it’s made whilst the VM is running, so I suggest you make sure that Fusion/Parallels is not running when you copy the data.

Why?

Because if you copy the files that Fusion (or Parallels) is using for a disk image, then you’re backing up what’s on disk, but not what’s in memory, in disk buffers, etc. So when you come to restore from backup, you may find that the disk image is corrupted. In the worst case scenario you won’t be able to start up the VM’s operating system successfully at all, or restore any files contained within the VM’s file-store.

By backing up when the VM isn’t running, you ensure that all data is on disk in a safe, consistent state.

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As of the the 8th June 2009, Safari 4 is out of beta, and wordpress’s insert-link dialogue works! So this article is now superfluous — good stuff.

I’ll leave the article here to help clarify what WebKit is and how to use it, but if you’re looking to get wordpress’s insert-hyperlink dialogue working with Safari 4beta then all you need do is download the full release version of Safari 4 from Apple’s site.

And now for the original article…

If you’re a Mac and wordpress user, and you’ve tried out Safari 4 Public Beta, then you will have noticed that you can’t add hyperlinks in wordpress‘ visual editor (Geek Guides has documented the problem nicely here).

Now there’s a fix — the latest WebKit on top of Safari 4 Public Beta works fine, with no problems in wordpress‘ visual editor. Here’s the proof (you may need to take my word for it: this _is_ Safari 4):

Note that the Insert/edit link dialogue box isn’t greyed out — result!

To achieve this, first install Safari 4beta from Apple’s site and reboot. Then install the latest WebKit nightly build for Mac OS.

Now you have two versions of Safari. One calls itself Safari and that’s as downloaded from Apple, the other calls itself WebKit and is the browser from Apple, but with the latest WebKit plugged into it. Here they are in my dock — the brassy compass is the WebKit version of Safari.

Now all that’s left to do is to enter Safari’s Preferences and set the default browser to be WebKit:

and you’re sorted. Of course, if you don’t want to do the above then it’s still good news: if the latest WebKit sorts the problem, then Safari 4 should, in time, pick up the fix. Good stuff.

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Coming to Mac OS X from Windows (XP and Vista), I missed being able to lock my session using a simple key-chord. I work in a shared office so it’s sensible to lock the session every time I walk away — something I do regularly.

In Windows, you simply press Windows-L and that’s it — time to go. Mac OS X Leopard doesn’t provide anything as succinct as standard, but there are ways.

Firstly, there are a couple of solutions that are accepted as standard ways of doing this — but unfortunately both have problems. I’ll cover these methods first in case they work for you, and then I’ll cover a solution that really is as quick and easy to use as the Windows’ lock screen key chord.

Partial solution number one: use a hot corner

A hot corner allows you to drop into the screen saver by moving the cursor to a chosen corner of the screen. To do this, first go to System Preferences->Desktop & Screen Saver and click on Hot Corners… Then select Start Screen Saver for one of the corners:

Now, when you place the cursor in that corner (I chose the bottom-left), the screen saver will start.

Of course, this doesn’t help unless your system is configured to require a password when woken from the screen saver. You can set that in System Preferences->Security:

And that’s it. Now, before you walk away from your Mac, just drop the cursor into the bottom-left corner of the screen.

However, there is a problem with this method — at least for me — as I don’t want the system to prompt for a password on wakeup. I end up typing my password far too often — every time I’ve left the machine alone long enough for the screen saver to start.

What I want is the Mac to remain unlocked until I explicitly lock it. So, on to solution two…

Partial solution number two: select a pull-down from the menu bar

Here’s another way of locking the machine, and this one doesn’t require that you tick Require password to wake up this computer from sleep or screen saver.

The trick is to enable fast user switching in System Preferences->Accounts->Login Options:

which will then place your user name in the menu bar at the top of the screen.

When you want to lock the session, just click on your user name:and select Login Window… and you’re done. (You can also achieve a similar result by ticking Show Status in Menu Bar in Keychain’s preferences if you prefer.)

What’s my beef with this solution? The problem is that it’s still rather slow and fiddly — and it’s something I do regularly, so I want to just press and go, just as I did with Windows.

A full solution

To implement a full Windows-L style solution we need Dockables to provide us with an application that locks the Mac OS session, and Quicksilver to launch that application.

First, download and install Dockables from cocoaapp.com. This gives you a bunch of useful applications in a sub-folder of your Applications folder:

and the one we’re interested in is Lock Screen.

Next, download and install Blacktree’s Quicksilver and run it to configure a new Lock Screen key-chord. Quicksilver will present you with its main window — just quit that and instead move to Quicksilver’s menu bar at the top of the screen and select Triggers… from the drop-down menu.

In the Triggers window that appears, click on the + at the bottom and select HotKey.

A new window will appear. Click on the first field and start to type lock screen. Quicksilver will rapidly find the Lock Screen dockable you installed earlier. Click Save.

Nearly there

You now have a new command, but with no trigger. So click on the None in your new command,

click in the input field labelled Hot Key: and press the key combination you wish to use to lock your session from now on. (I chose alt+cmd+L because the obvious choice – cmd+L — is already used by Thunderbird — my email client.)

I suggest you don’t use the ctrl key as part of your hot key-chord. If you do then quicksilver presents this dialog every time you type the chord:

Now, having typed a key-chord (which doesn’t include ctrl), exit the Triggers window and you have yourself a new Lock Screen hot key-chord: alt+cmd+L in the example above.

And finally, tweak some settings

You need quicksilver to run at all times, so bring up Quicksilver’s preferences (available from the Quicksilver menu in the menu bar at the top of the screen):

and tick Start at login. You may also want to tidy up the dock a little — as quicksilver is running all the time I’d rather it didn’t appear in the dock and instead appeared in the menu bar:

so I untick Show icon in dock (and I also tick the option check for updates):

And that’s everything sorted. Any time you need your display locked, just type alt+cmd+L…

and walk away…

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If, like me, you have a Huey Pro and you’re using it under Mac OS X leopard then you may have hit this problem: once you’ve restarted your machine, the screen no longer adjusts its brightness automatically. If you start up and then quit the Huey Pro software then all’s well again until next time you log out or reboot.

It’s strange that (certainly in version 1.5.0) Pantone haven’t fixed this (surely the Mac is a major market for them?), but until they do, here’s a work-around.

The fix

The problem arises because Pantone Huey Pro’s helper application isn’t started automatically. The fix is to manually add it to the list of applications that start when you log in.

You can’t simply select the helper application as it’s buried within the Huey Pro package, so you need to do the following:

Go to System Preferences->Accounts and select Login Items, then click on + to add an application.

Now, leave that window for now and use a separate Finder window to go to Applications and scroll down to Huey Pro. Then right click (ctrl+click) and select Show Package Contents:

Now browse to Contents->Resources->Support and select hueyAmbient. Don’t double-click it as that will simply start it up. Insteady, drag hueyAmbient to the Add Login Item window you opened earlier and that will select the hueyAmbient helper.

Now click on Add, and you’re done.

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The fix is t go into the virtual machine’s settings, select Network and then change the setting from Share the Mac’s network connection to Connect directly to the physical network (bridged).

This results in your virtual machine DHCPing etc. in the same way as the Mac, rather than straining your VM’s networking through NAT running on the Mac.

If your network provides DHCP then changing the above setting may result in better, more robust networking.

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